Did you see the breaking news story yesterday about the baby Ivanka reportedly aborted when she was 16? Unconfirmed sources say that Donald Trump was the father of that child and that he was the one who paid for the abortion.

Not that Lies in the Age of Propaganda really matter to Trump or his disciples.

Especially not now that Trump has made it official: We can put the Christ back in Christmas again. Can there be any better proof than this that Trump is God’s man for the hour?

Dobson and Falwell and Graham reportedly got drunk on eggnog after Corey Lewandowski went on national news to defend Christ in Christmas. And who better to be a defender of Christ than Trump, America’s preferred Savior? If you doubt that, go read the posts on his Facebook page.

Merry CHRISTMiss everyone!

Truth has become the first casualty of breathing oxygen in the same atmosphere as Trump.

Buddha said that there are three things that can’t be long hidden: The Sun. The Moon. The Truth. But Buddha never met a man like Trump or his deluded disciples.

Donald Trump Aborts Truth on a daily basis. Often in 140 character or less.

According to Speaker Ryan (who is more concerned with free lunch programs giving kids empty souls, than he is worried about sucking face with a president-elect who sold his soul for a lap dance from Mitch McConnell) nobody cares what Trump tweets.

Tell that to China.

Tell that to Boeing.

If JESUS really is THE TRUTH, he might want to drop by Trump Towers and see if he can’t arrange a face-to-face with Trump and Kellyanne Conway, because LORD KNOWS those two are already drafting a fictitious account of the next BLOKEBLUSTER tweet.

This fool hasn’t even taken the oath of office, yet. (Please, God, we are begging the Electoral College, do better than the voters did).

Meanwhile, insomniacs around the world are plotting ways to actually shovel through the daily muck of lies Trump repeats.

One has to lose sleep to keep up with the constant barrage of questions that arise:

Did Trump really pay for Ivanka’s abortion?

Who was first to learn that they were half-brothers – Putin or Trump?

What is the name of plastic surgeon that Melania Trump and Caitlyn Jenner share?

Which came first: The call from Trump to Taiwan or from Taiwan to Trump?

Masha Gessen, ProPublica journalist, suggests that we are all asking the wrong questions. Speaking with On Media’s Brooke Gladstone, Gessen says we need to be asking what game is it Trump is playing by lying 90 percent of the time.

In other words, our starting point whenever we are talking about Trump is to acknowledge that he begins first and foremost with a lie.

We saw that this week when the union folks at Indiana’s Carrier plant came right out and said: “He lied his ass off,” referring to Trump’s claim that he saved 700 jobs (Trump says it’s 1,100 but he’s lying) by employing a bullying tactics and Corporate Welfare. Trump got Pence to arrange for $7 million in tax cuts for a company that already makes millions in Defense Contracts.

So in other words, Trump got the employees at Dairy Queen and Wal-Mart to fork over a third of their paychecks (known as taxes, something Trump never pays) to their neighbors who are employed at Carrier, to keep them employed. You’d think it would be easier if the folks in the trailer park just cashed their checks and gave a third of it to their neighbor, rather than running it through the federal coffers, but hey, that’s the beauty of voting in a Big Sugar Daddy like Trump to handle your life for you, right?

Ain’t America Great again!

Gessen says the point of Trump’s constant lies is to control reality for the rest of us: Trump says whatever the hell he wants and that is also a component of his power.

It’s like living with a willful selfish teen who is terrorizing his entire family as he spirals out-of-control, pitting Mom and Dad, brother and sister against each other as they try to figure out how best to deal with his temper-tantrums and daily assaults.

Trump is assaulting all of us daily. Some of us are aware of it and trying desperately to get the rest of the family to pay attention, while the rest of the family just poo-poos him and says, “Oh, he’ll come around in due time.”

No, Gessen warns, he won’t. Quit denying that the man acting like a brat is anything but a brat. Or to use Gessen’s words: Believe the autocrat.

George Lakoff is a cognitive linguist who studies how language forms circuitry in our brains. He also spoke to On Media about Trump’s constant barrage of lies. Trump understands that the more he repeats lies, the more ingrained those lies become in our brains. That’s why anyone trying to brainwash another person begins by repeating lies over and over again. Cult leaders have long employed chanting as part of their manipulations.

When you hear Trump’s folks yelling “Lock Her Up” that is just the same technique Jim Jones employed. It’s using language to control and manipulate the masses.

It doesn’t take long for Trump to control the orgasmic masses.

Truth is no longer an issue for them.

The chant is all that matters.

“What he was doing was using your brain to his advantage,” Lakoff says. “If you repeat, what happens? First, language is meaningful. If the language activates certain neural circuits, every time a neural circuit is activated it gets stronger. The more you repeat it, the stronger it gets, in whoever hears it. So you’re going to get, you know, “crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary.” At the same time, you’re framing her as dishonest. And if you’re dishonest, then you should be locked up. So “lock her up, lock her up” over and over and over …people really think in terms of frames, metaphors, narratives, emotions, and so on. They’re not thinking just in terms of logic and the facts.”

Which is why those of us not joining in the chanting, those of us who don’t regard Trump as America’s Savior but rather a home-grown Terrorist, often note that facts don’t matter to Trump’s disciples.

They don’t matter.

Facts don’t matter because that’s not how language works in our brain.

Trump elicits emotion. It’s the emotion that gets embedded in our brain. (This might help explain the rise of hate crimes since the emotion Trump primarily appeals to isn’t inspirational in nature but rather survivalist).

Trump is never going to be held accountable to the truth. It simply doesn’t matter to him. No appeals to his better nature will help. We must assume from the get-go that he does not have a better nature to appeal to.

We have to approach him with the understanding that he’s going to piss on our legs and swear that it is raining.

There is no middle ground, no compromising. We must ignore the chanting masses and tell the truth.

“Hillary now has two and a half-million votes over Trump,” Lakoff says. “The person who the majority of Americans wanted to be president isn’t president. If you’re in the media, why are you there? You’re there for the public good. You’re there to tell the truth. You’re there to make sure that the truth is always told and not hidden. That’s your job. It’s not being progressive or democratic or anything like that. It’s your job!”

We must resist the urge to adopt Trump’s language or to chase down his lies. When Trump says he’s going to do away with regulations on businesses, we must put that in its most truthful context.

Lakoff offers: “What is a regulation? A regulation is a protection from corporations doing things that would harm the public, for example, putting poisons in the environment.”

Getting rid of regulations is the business-friendly way of saying, corporations are going to screw you over in pursuit of higher profits for their already obscenely rich CEOs.

They aren’t going to worry about what things you might be exposed to today that might put you at risk for cancer tomorrow.

They aren’t going to worry about whether you are safe because safety is burdensome for people trying to make as much money as cheaply as possible.

Trump isn’t going to relax regulations to put America to work again.

Trump is going to do away with protections for America’s workers.

He is going to do away with employee protections and public health protections because it’s cheaper and will increase profit margins for the already wickedly wealthy.

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3 Comments

I am feeling overwhelmed by all the bad news, and the feeling that I live in a nation dominated by kool-aid drinking zombies that are marching in lock-step toward the cliff's edge. I no longer feel proud to be an American. I don't recognize this country anymore, where juries are conflicted about a white man shooting an unarmed black man in the back, and a majority of people think that Donald Trump can be trusted to put the nation's best interests before his own. I hate to be a fatalist, I know that now is the time to fight, but it's all feeling very futile at the moment.

Bess: I share your conflicts. I can only say, do all that you are able. Surround yourself with people who you trust. speak with them. Listen to music you love. Read poetry. Do good whenever you can. Small things matter. Find something to laugh about everyday. (I turn to Ellen or Cobert or Trevor Noah). And speak out as you are capable. We must not allow Trump to control his narrative. When he appoints someone who is a threat to the environment, we must not undermine that threat. We need to call it out. We cannot control that which we will not name. We must name the wrongdoing. Trump is a dangerous man. When TIME magazine names him Person of the Year, let's be sure and identify what TIME has done: They have named a sexual predator and an abuser Person of the Year. We must not be silent. But we must find beauty in the world around us still. We must be the beauty in the lives of others. Hugs.

Interesting that the sign in the first photo decried the "change" Obama hoped for as the hammer and sickle of communism. The implication: Obama is a dictator. In fact, he was a rather weak president never willing enough to engage Congress in a real fight. Book smart but not street smart enough to effectively engage the partisan system. With a firm GOP commitment to 'break him', Obama was forced to rely too heavily on executive orders. This fulfilled the dictatorial description for his many opponents, a conclusion they seemed to have arrived at before the fact, not after. Interesting that many who voted for Trump did so because they wanted to vote 'for change.' Well... Change we will get. Not only change in policy and programs, but change in what constitutes truth itself. That is being redefined on an hourly basis through the content of whatever the man thinks and tweets. Now the important question is, which style looks more like the hammer and sickle dictatorship? The important thing for us to do is to keep watching, asking questions and having conversations with one another. In order to do that, especially when engaging people of faith on issues of creation care, we might have to use new terminology. So here's a term I coined a number of years ago that may help. "The environment" has become a loaded, divisive word to many minds. To me, it is too impersonal and inadequate to the task. Instead, I talk about "God's life support system." That's a theological statement about creation that declares: 1) whose it is [God's]; 2) what it does [it includes and supports all life as we know it]; and 3) how it works [as a system--it by definition must include and account for all elements and all changes, nothing can be externalized]. It's not a copyrighted term. I'm giving it away free. If it helps, use it. Try using it and explaining it with your friends, even reps in Congress. And peace be upon you!

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Karen Spears Zacharias

Karen Spears Zacharias grew up in a military family. Her father was killed in action in 1966. That early experience led Karen into a career as a journalist. She studied at Berry College, Oregon State University and Eastern Oregon University.
Karen has worked at newspapers around the country. Her commentary has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, National Public Radio and The Huffington Post.
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